 Good morning and welcome to the 17th meeting of the Education, Children and Young People Committee in 2022. For the first item on our agenda today, we are continuing to take evidence for our college regionalisation inquiry. During today's session, we will take evidence from trade unions representing teaching and support staff at colleges and from an organisation that supports student engagement in the quality of the learning experience to hear the views of staff and students on the college sector and the impacts of regionalisation. I would like to welcome Stuart Brown, who is the national officer from the Educational Institute of Scotland. Good morning. Eve Lewis, the director of student partnership in Quality Scotland, or SPARX, and Lorcan Mullin, the regional officer, head of higher and further education from Unison Scotland. Good morning to all of you. A bit of housekeeping to begin with. Our session is hybrid today with our witnesses and one of our members participating virtually. I ask those who are attending remotely, as you will be able to catch my eye, that if you want to come in, can you put a capital R in the chat box when you wish to speak? The clerks will be monitoring the chat box, and I will bring you in when I can. I also want to reassure you that it is not necessary for every witness to respond to every question, so if you do not think that you have anything to add on a particular question, that is fine. However, again, should you wish to speak, please pop an R in the chat function. The Q&A session will last for approximately an hour this morning, and I would like to thank you all for your time today. With that, can I go to our virtual colleague Mr Mundell, Oliver Mundell, for the first question, please? Thank you, convener. It is almost impossible to talk about the college sector without talking about funding. I find it hard to believe that, off the back of the pandemic and from a Government that talks up opportunities for young people and learners in Scotland that we have seen the college sector so badly funded. I would be interested to hear your views on the impact that it has had across the country. Will we go from an alphabetical point of view? Can we go to Stuart Brown from the EIS first to respond to that? Thank you, convener. The part of the EIS that organisations in the college sector will always want more funding for FE, because FE has a specific mission within Scottish society. It works to provide opportunities for people that have perhaps been left behind by other parts of the education system or are retraining, and we are often told that FE has a pivotal role in the post-Covid recovery. Any cuts in funding or any perception that there is a lack of funding is obviously of concern to us. We would always want more funding for FE. It is a very important mission to achieve for Scotland. The outlook over the next couple of years looks pretty grim. It is of concern. I know of a number of colleges that are already looking at pretty serious cuts, including some colleges that are considering compulsory redundancies, which is obviously of a concern to our members. The sector of a whole has some serious challenges in regard to funding moving forward. Ms Lewis-Eve, do you have something that you wish to contribute? Yes. In relation to funding, colleges do such an amazing job in terms of access to education, routes into different types of work and into higher education. Students get so many life chances from the college sector that funding of colleges is vital. In relation particularly to the area that I work in, one of the current pressures of funding is in terms of the ability of students' associations to operate and represent student voices effectively. We are currently seeing already quite precarious organisations being affected by cuts to funding and cuts within colleges to the staff support and areas supporting students' associations. That is of a worry for us. Thank you very much, Ive. Lorcan Mullin, over to you now. Thanks, convener. I echo the comments made by Stuart Brown. I think that there are very difficult choices for the Scottish Government at the moment in terms of budget, but we have been on record for years saying that the further education sector is chronically underfunded. The information that we have—this is from research done by colleges in Scotland—is that per place. There is lower funding for college students than any other element of Scottish education, so lower than nursery, primary, secondary and university. Especially if we think about the demographics within Scottish life that tend to access education through colleges rather than through universities. We do not think that it is fair or equitable for that to be the case. Unison would support a step change in funding for the sector. The only caveat that we would put on that is that the sector still has choices with the funding that it has. Even if there is not an improved situation around funding, we believe that the sector could do an awful lot better in terms of embedding fair work, building a constructive relationship with the trade unions, and making some wiser choices in some cases. We are only here today to talk about the sector as opposed to more general terms, so that would be the broad answer from Unison Scotland. Oliver, do you have a follow-on question from anything that you have heard? I also wanted to ask about the position for colleges operating in more rural and remote parts of the country and whether the representatives felt that those colleges were getting a fair deal and whether young people, learners and those returning to education in more rural and remote parts of the country were getting a good quality service under the current model. Perhaps on that, as it is about students and learners, can we go to Eve Lewis to respond to that first, please? It is not really within my expertise in terms of funding models. Our approach would be students in every part of Scotland deserve the best experience and the needs to be models in place to ensure that that works in every institution, every college, and ensuring that we look at personalised approaches depending on where students are, where they are studying, what modes of study they do, and some of the approaches in terms of digitalisation and how students can access learning digitally and need investment in so that they develop sufficiently as well. I will go round, because I am not getting any Rs in the chat bar, so I do not know if that means nobody wants to respond to the questions further, but perhaps I can go to Mr Brown if he is paused. Thank you, convener. Part of my answer to that question is maybe a reflection on the regionalisation process. Regionalisation led to a number of college mergers, with a number of colleges becoming significantly larger entities. One of the concerns that the EIS has had throughout the process of regionalisation is the impact that that has had on equity of access. Where colleges before may have been smaller entities embedded in their local communities, they are now part of larger entities where perhaps someone in a town or a rural area may have to travel further to access a course. That is a concern because, as I am sure the committee knows, rural poverty is an issue in Scotland. I live in the north-east of Scotland and I taught in the north-east of Scotland. I am fully aware of the effects of rural poverty. If you, all of a sudden, have to travel maybe 50 miles to access a course, you used to be able to access on your doorstep, I think that that is a serious concern, because there will be some individual, some students that cannot access the education that they need there. In terms of the sector more generally, I think that regionalisation, as I said, created some large entities. Those larger entities tend to be urban based, and it is certainly the perception of the EIS that some of those more larger urban colleges have a slightly different perspective of the future of the sector looking towards tertiary models and degree awarding and things like that, which would risk weaving rural communities further behind in terms of equity of access. That is a big issue that I think that the sector must grapple with in the next couple of years. The next suite of questions is from my colleague Ruth. Obviously, colleges provide that important access to education and routes to employment, as you have said this morning. I wonder if the panel can share their reflections on how colleges post-regionalisation are responding to the needs of learners and the needs of the communities that they serve. Stuart, you spoke a little bit about it there. I wonder if I can come to you first and just to be good to hear some of the good practice as well as the challenges, if possible. Sure. I am going to apologise to the committee that it seems that there is a garden outside with a very loud piece of equipment, so I apologise if that is causing a bit of feedback. I will try to use my teacher voice and project over it. As I said, regionalisation created larger entities across Scotland in terms of college mergers. I think that there are competing visions. There are certainly colleges out there that are very community focused. I know that from working and speaking with principals, managers and union reps in those colleges. There are other colleges that perhaps see the future of the sector in a slightly different way by looking at competing with post-92 universities, et cetera. Of those two options, it is the latter that concerns me more, and it is the former that I think really is, the mission of colleges. There is good practice in the sector. There are colleges out there in rural communities that work very closely with their local economies, but I also understand that there is societal importance as well. It is not just about the needs of business, it is about the needs of the society and the community that they are in. I think that that is something that the EIS would welcome more encouragement on the sector to focus on, not just the needs of local businesses but the needs of local communities. I think that in more rural areas that becomes even more pertinent. In terms of how colleges respond to the needs of learners and how they approach and listen to those learner needs, there has been a big improvement in the ways in which colleges listen to and respond to much more active students associations that operate at a regional level. I often get to the nuts and bolts of what is working for students and what is not working for students. When we ask students about whether they want more localisation of courses or more spread out across the region, their answers are diverse. Some want some local stuff, some want a development of a more expert course in one location and some are very willing to access it remotely, whereas others have real access problems, so things like childcare, disabilities will all have a play on whether or not people can access a course locally or across the region. I think that there has been lots of excellent work across and in regional settings to meet the needs of students, but there are some difficult choices that people need to make and they need to make sure that students are e-part of that decision making to make sure that it happens in their best interests. If I could just press you for an example of some of that good practice, it is good to hear exactly what that looks like for a student and to acknowledge that it will be different from the diversity of needs of the students, but if you could share with the committee some examples of what that good practice would look like. The good practice in terms of how colleges work with their student body and make decisions in partnership with them. Where colleges are reviewing what is happening and their provision strategically with students and the Students Association, that helps them to make good decisions. I remember very early on, for instance, in one of the colleges that is quite urban-based, there was an assumption that you could easily move courses and have them in one location, but it was students that were able to point out some of the challenges even within an urban setting of a student dropping off their children at school and then getting on a bus and getting on another bus and getting to the other location. However, now some of those things are changing, so there are huge numbers of students that like some of the digital provision and there are huge numbers of students that do not like the digital provision. There is a really important way of working with students to make the most of the digital provision that could help a parent dropping off someone at childcare and then having to get into it, of course, but it can also be a barrier to learning as well. It is really important to understand the complexity of the student experience before you make decisions about where you put courses. Pais Cymru, the trade union experience is always going to skew more towards the per-practice, the negative examples, because that tends to be where we are called in. There certainly is good practice out there, but if we are looking at regionalisation and if we are looking at where some of the practice has been a bit more problematic, the fact that regionalisation has been coterminous with years of recurring cuts and recurring severance programmes means that, within a college spread across a local authority area, you may have services now concentrated just on one campus. You may have staff cut in certain areas, so it takes longer to access to those services, either in terms of waiting times or in terms of travel and transport and our concern is that that is at the managed level of service and it is more stress and more difficulty for the staff that are delivering those types of services, so, say, grocery, student finance, learning support, etc. We think that that would be the sort of underlying structural reason why so many of our members in different surveys have reported to go on levels of stress and more intensification since the start of regionalisation, those different issues are coming together. I apologise that I don't really have good examples to bring you, but those are the examples in broad terms that it can give you when we receive feedback from our representatives and members in this sector. Mr Brown wants to come back in on that point as well, if that is possible before we move on. Thank you, convener. It was actually to pick up on Eve's point of digital delivery, because I think that there is, and I am sure that we can all understand, a massive amount of potential in digital delivery. Over the course of the pandemic, the College of Lecture and Workforce, our members, released up and delivered in terms of digital delivery. I am not saying that that is an answer to all problems of access, but there are some serious issues, potentially, in terms of access to poverty. It was just to make the point that some scoping out of the pros and cons, the successes and failures of digital delivery, would be something across the sector that we would welcome. Indeed, it is something that, through the NGNC, we have requested that the sector engage in. However, as of yet, College of Employers have not taken us up on that offer. Thank you, Mr Brown and Lorcan. I think that you want to come back in again as well. Thank you, convener. We are just very briefly on that low point. Our union is not against innovation, it is not against a greater use of digital tools than education, and there was great work done during the pandemic to maximise the student experience, using those tools in difficult circumstances. We would save us in universities as well. The type of rich campus life, the community experience, is crucial for students. Within the current budget context, with the pressures on colleges, there are some college management teams that are making assumptions about a move towards a more digital delivery model and making assumptions about what the permanent situation will be after the pandemic in terms of the number of people on campus. They are using that to remove crucial services, whether that is nursery, provision of good food on campus and all those things are negative for the student experience. They diminish the student experience and they lead college students in a worse position than university students, for example. We do not think that that is just, we do not think that that is equal, so that would be our word of warning around sweeping ideas of a move towards digital that we do not lose that crucial element of student life and that crucial element of learning. Thank you very much for that, Lauren. Ruth got one more. I suppose that thinking about that responsiveness to communities and to business as well for Ruth's work. How much influence does staff have on the choice and design of the qualifications that colleges are offering? If I can put that to Stuart Brown, convener. I think that that is a good question. I would say in all honesty that it would be inconsistent at best. One of the things that regionalisation has caused that is of major concern to the EIS is around college governance. Our perception that college principles and management teams have significant levels of power over decision making without an awful lot of what we can see proper accountability to their college boards. There are colleges out there that are more collegiate towards the unions, but I do not believe that that is the culture across the sector. The EIS feeler has an education sub-committee of its executive. Our members are not just trade unionists, they are educationalists. The EIS in the school sector is engaged in all sorts of different fora in terms of educational policies, designing curriculum and those sorts of things. That does not happen to the same extent in the college sector and I speak from experience on that matter. It is something that we would like to see more of because when you are designing the curriculum, when you are designing your educational provision, having the practitioner's voice in there is pivotal. I think that the fact that that is inconsistent at best is of major concern. Eve, I notice that you have got an R on the chat bar. Is that to respond to that one? No, it was the previous question, so I am happy to move on. I am content, thank you. Thank you very much for those questions. I have listened with great interest to the contributions so far. I want to drill a little bit more into the transition stages and how colleges communicate with schools to make sure that our young people know the options that are available and then I will go on to talk about, well, maybe you could talk about the bit between colleges and universities as well. My first question would be, I think that I will go for Eve first and then possibly Lorcan can come in and Stuart, if you have got anything to add. How effective are schools in highlighting the options that are available in colleges? Ieave? I suppose I would comment from the start that over the period of regionalisation there has been amazing work in colleges to reach out to schools and to reach out to universities. In those 10 years, the growth of programmes where colleges are dealing with school pupils, bringing them into the college for teaching or going out and doing provision within college has transformed and equally the growth of articulation routes. I see amazing practice every day where we are looking at these routes in and out of college and into other things like apprentices in terms of workplace and a big growth in those types of. I think that there are some areas where that works at a regional level as well in terms of planning. I think that there are some very good examples of colleges and schools planning together and colleges and universities doing some planning together, but it maybe needs more input or more activity to nurture that joint planning across the sector. Currently, I am doing quite a lot within the quality processes to look at the student journey in a tertiary approach. Instead of just looking at what the college does or what the university does or what the school is doing, we look at the student journey and try to change the way that we look at routes and look at the quality of the experience as well as the volume of people coming in and out and doing different routes. There are still masses to do, so there are still plenty of young people studying in schools that do not know the options that are available to them in college and in university, and there are still massive issues around parity of esteem. Some college routes would be amazing for young people, but parents or other people involved in decision making perhaps negating those against other routes, and students themselves definitely student perceptions of what college life will be like compared to what university life will be like, for instance, that might make choices that are not built on the full picture of information. There are amazing practices still on pathways within some of the regions. There are some regions that have done some great work on looking at those pathways, but there is more to do. You mentioned the further activity that would be required. Can you give me an example? Have you got an idea of what that activity could be? We are in a position to make recommendations, so it would be good to hear your ideas. We could benefit from having programmes of work that look at developing students, getting the student opinion and getting student voice through those routes. At the moment, we do work on listening to students in college, or listening to students in university, or listening to students in school. Not all of those conversations join up, so if we look at some of the articulation routes or some of the journeys that students take, we could do some really amazing work at trying to look at what has worked and what has not worked and what has influenced their decisions, and joining up those conversations from a student perspective. Quite a lot of the work at the moment is looking at targets and numbers, like making sure that we have the right numbers of students going through particular routes, but we could do more to look at the experience and what influences students' decisions, but not just talking to school pupils about their school and their decision, but actually going through to the people who have gone past that. Looking at the college or the university students and talking about how, with hindsight, those decisions have suited them and then them also talking to the school pupils about those decisions and things. Also, in making sure that staff and staff-leading courses—I think that there are people involved in access and articulation routes and things like that—sometimes get together, but we have people at course design level or teachers, so the idea of getting teachers, college staff and university staff with the students that are on those journeys and really having a good think about what is working and what is not working and how we can improve it. I think that this is a really, really interesting question. We all know the importance of transition at every stage of the educational journey of people. That goes from Mali one, going from nursery to primary one in August, right through to people going to college, people going to university. I have a couple of points on that. I think that, again—and Ives may be touched on that, and I think that Ives answers to that question was really interesting. I think that, again, it would maybe be inconsistent across the sector in terms of the quality of transition work, the quality of school, college engagement. Again, I think that that is a sort of example of, certainly from our view, a lack of strategic discussion going on at sectoral level, at national level. There is a strategic partnership forum set up now that has both working and I sit on that forum. There is student representation on it, but it is in its infancy and it has came six, seven years down the lines of regionalisation and it should have really been there since the start. I think that there is a lack of practitioner voice in discussions around that. I think that more strategic discussion about things such as transition would be welcome. I am not saying that the EIS would look for a uniformity in how colleges do that. That is not absolutely not what we are looking for, but it is about the sharing of good practice, ensuring that the practitioners and the students have a voice and ensuring that, whether you are in the north-east of Scotland or you are in the borders, you are getting a similar quality of experience, maybe not the same experience with transition, but a similar quality. That is something that the sector really needs to work on moving forward. Thanks for that. I suppose that we have talked a little bit about how school courses dovetail with college courses. How do teaching staff in colleges support the transition? I think that you have mentioned a wee bit about it, but if there is anything further to add from the other contributors, that would be great to hear. Perhaps Stuart, if you can help with that. Thank you, convener. There are varied ways that they do. A lot of colleges have what are called school college partnerships where college staff and school staff are involved in jointly delivering qualifications. However, the EIS feeler has some concern about the delivery of school college partnerships. We are actually in the middle of engagement in trying to get as much information as we can about them. There are issues such as college lecturers who are perhaps not GTCS registered, maybe teaching in schools, unaccompanied going on in colleges. We are aware of that. We are trying to find a bigger picture to see if we can get some answers around that. There is an awful lot of work that goes on. Whether or not it is completely student-focused and not focused on numbers and performance indicators, I could not possibly say definitely in either way, but the fact that I can give you a definitive answer on that is a concern enough for me. That is super. We have a bit of change attack now, so we are going to move to some questions from Ross Greer. Thank you, convener. In the first instance, I have a couple of questions for Stuart and the EIS. Your written briefing was very useful. It indicated that, as far as I feel concerned, the structures of the NGNC work well. For example, there are more issues in the individual college board governance. Are you suggesting that the sustained industrial action that we have seen in the past eight years is largely being caused by issues elsewhere, i.e. with individual college principles or boards, rather than with any structural problems in the NGNC itself? That is a big question. Mr Greer, I will try to answer it as best as I can. There are a number of factors in play here. As you said in the submission that the EIS gave to the committee, I have made clear that we think that the NGNC is on paper and constitutionally a strong collective bargaining framework. I say that as the NGNC unions side joint secretary. There is no reason in terms of the structure from what we can see why that should not work. Collective bargaining should encourage, force, could you hold, whatever way you want to look at it, employers and unions, into working more collaboratively. In my view, it should stop industrial action happening. If you look at the schools, the SSCT has existed for decades and school teachers have been on strike once since the 1980s. That is the power of collective bargaining. It forces collegiality and helps employers and unions to work together. That has not been the experience of the NGNC. We are in the middle of alloting on this year's pay award. There were eight days of industrial action in that campaign, eight days in which our members lost pay through strike. There has only been one occasion in the lifetime of the NGNC in which a pay award has been made without industrial action. That is a concern of itself. I think that there is a culture, or certainly my perception is that there is a culture among college management that nothing gets given away for free, that is adversarial. There seems to be a misunderstanding that trade unions react. We react to the employers that are in front of us. If employers are adversarial, if employers are not negotiating in good faith, then we will react accordingly. That is what has happened in the sector. Alongside that culture, there have also been situations where, perhaps, individual college principals have caused issues or individual colleges have caused issues that have went national. I know that you are aware of what happened at Forth Valley College last year, where 27 lecturers had their contracts terminated and were re-employed on terms of conditions. The two of us were the same as a lecturer, but paid significantly less. We were losing our class contact and that decision was reversed after a period of industrial action with no financial or educational gain to the sector. All in all, there is a framework there with national bargaining that is really effective on paper that should work. However, I have heard from the employer side of the NGNC different members of it at different times saying that it is not the role of national collective bargaining to interfere in the local. That is not true. If you have national collective bargaining, your terms and conditions are negotiated nationally, so it is absolutely the role of the NGNC to have a view on things that are happening locally. There is probably a lot that I could say about that, Mr Greer, but I hope that is a good answer for the staff. Lorcan is wanting to respond as well, Ross, if that is possible. Yeah, please do, Lorcan. Thanks, convener. Thank you, convener. On behalf of the support staff unions and just that, on some of the plans that Spirit made, I don't think that they are a major structural or constitutional things that need to be corrected with the NGNC. I think that it is really more about cohesive buy-in from the employers on that side, and I am hoping to come out as we emerge from the pay disputes that we are in at the moment. Hopefully there are small steps towards improving that. I am hoping that we can consolidate going forward, but Mr Greer is right. We organise across many different sectors in Scottish society. We are not in dispute or battle for industrial action as often in those other parts of Scottish public services. There is something in particular to FE. I don't think that it is the structures as they are up and down. I think that it is just the fact that there are some powerful figures in the employer side that have never really reconciled themselves to national bargaining, and that has different ways of articulating itself through the approach to the difficult issues, including disputes. I think that we can, with a bit of creativity, a bit of effort and a bit of intensive work on the employer side, to some extent on our side, can improve things going forward. It has been challenging, and I think that some of the deep unhappiness of staff's experience through regionalisation has played into that as well, in terms of stress, in terms of working densification. That has a way of articulating itself through union structures as well. I think that that is part of the picture that can't be missed. I have heard suggestions from elsewhere that there are, essentially, interpersonal issues on the NGNC. It is largely the same group of people who have sat on either side of the table for too long, and that has built up personal challenges that are contributing towards those tensions. From what you both said this morning, it does not sound from your perspective like that that is necessarily the case. The issues are perhaps more further upstream on the employer's side. Stewart, would it be correct to characterise your position that, essentially, NGNC negotiations work well? There is not necessarily profound interpersonal issues there. The challenges are when the employer's side negotiators go back to the employer's association to get ratification of whatever agreement has been struck in the room. I think that there is a lot in that, Mr Greer. I am not going to say that there are interpersonal issues in the NGNC. However, what I will say is that I am a relative newcomer to it. I have been in this role for 18 months and have not come from adversarial trade union background from the schools. I have come into it with an open mind and seen what I think the issues are like. There are some interpersonal issues. However, when you have had year-on-year disputes sitting in the past eight years, that is going to have some residue bad feeling, a residue lack of trust that has been identified in three lessons learned exercises by the Scottish Government. However, those lessons learned exercises have not produced any change, any change in the culture, any change in that element. There are structural issues in terms of how now College Employer Scotland does the rebranded operation. It is very clear to me and to EIS people and negotiators that there are often times in this pay situation that we have been in for the past eight months is an example of that, where their negotiators do not have an awful lot of room to manoeuvre. If you cannot come to a meeting with more than one position, you are not going to be able to negotiate effectively. The problem is that they have to go back to the College of Employers Scotland principles and take direction. They also have to go back and get any agreement ratified. We saw that last year in the instructor assessor dispute. We reached an agreement in the room that was then turned over by the College of Employers Scotland and further industrial action happened after that that was wholly unnecessary. The way that I understand the College Employers Association to work is that it needs unanimity in how it agrees things. That goes back to my earlier point about perhaps a disproportionate amount of power, influence strategically and politically between certain big colleges. If you have a situation where one college principle can hold out and stop an agreement being ratified, that means that negotiations as a whole will suffer. The structural issues from our perspective are not the machinery, but what goes on behind the machinery on the employer's side is a significant factor in the issues that we experience. I need to do a bit of a U-turn, because I admitted Stephanie Callaghan's question, so we are going to seem like we are stepping back a bit. Sorry, Stephanie, over to you. Thanks very much, convener, and sorry if this seems like a little jump backwards here. Earlier on, I was talking about college student associations. I have mentioned about the fact that students have quite a diverse range of views across how access courses are digitally, where they are etc. Clearly, it is not a one-size-fits-all right across the student population. It seems to me that there is a real need for choices and options for students. That can personalisation to improve their ability across the board to be able to sustain places. Is that something that student associations are advocating on? Absolutely. Students associations and student officers have a very high awareness of the diversity of the students that they are representing and the diversity of routes that they need. I think that the student officers are able and equipped to do a lot of work working within colleges and working at a national level so that we can talk about some of the ways in which we develop the personalisation of learning. I think that sometimes the potential of student officers and student associations to be involved in that discussion is not always realised. Sometimes colleges and perhaps the sector as a whole relies on feedback, so it asks students what they think and does an awful lot. Within the college sector, huge amounts of work listening to students and gathering student opinion happens, but there are opportunities for more strategic discussion with the students association and the student leaders, because those are not simple choices. We are not saying that approving one course of action or another course of action is very complex. We need to make sure that student association and student leaders are equipped first to have conversations with a wide range of students, but, importantly, are in the right places when we are designing and thinking about the future. Any regionalisation improved student input into board level. Students association sits at boards and are at that sort of level of decision making, but that is not really where this design element happens. We are making sure that we look at design and development and ideas really creating an excellent student experience needs to make sure that we develop more routes for the students association to be in that. Within the college sector, there is the aspiration that they need to be part of that discussion and the strategic conversation, but we need to ensure that they have the capacity to do that. Several students associations are struggling on that capacity. We have young inexperienced student officers coming into position, and they need proper support within the college to provide the continuity, to allow them to operate autonomously. They need support for autonomous, to be able to challenge. Students associations need to be able to challenge and be able to work strategically with their institutions. That is really interesting because the other question that I did have there as well was about the management boards and whether students' views are getting parity, whether they are influencing changes that are improving their experiences and their outcomes. I suppose that taking a look at what you have said there, you have spoken about students being involved in those strategic discussions with college leaders as well. The fact that there needs to be a little bit more support around that for students that are perhaps inexperienced. How would you say that we make that happen, that we get students involved in that design element to improve things? We need to support colleges to look at the role and the boards to look at what the role of student officers on board is. I think that there are definitely occasions where the student association is reporting on its activities to boards. It is almost using the board as a accountability process for itself. Sometimes it is enjoying taking up that role because it will be going to board and selling what a great job it is doing and talking about not being empowered to get into the more strategic decision making. There is confusion over why it is on board and what its role is, whether it is a service provider or whether it is a strategic decision maker. There is more work that we as an organisation can do in supporting colleges to think differently about the role of students in their process. There is work that we can do in writing into our arrangements and how we deal with things like outcome agreements and quality arrangements. We can ensure that the role of students in that is as a strategic change maker. I think that we can create national forums for those discussions as well. Lorcan and Stewart want to come in on that. We go to Lorcan first. Thanks, convener. Just a brief observation on this. That was a crucial point there from Eve around student representatives needing autonomy, as well as support and capacity to properly express their views. I would have, from different very difficult processes, where services were stripped out from colleges or where courses were cut and more of genuine controversy with the student body as well as with staff. The colleges put a significant amount of effort into managing student representatives during that time and put a significant amount of effort into isolating them from staff representatives as a way of trying to broker consent and trying to get those cuts through. I don't mean that at all to be patronising. I once did this myself many years ago. They are going to be an experience. They are going to be passing through in a short number of years. They need the support, but they also need the space to be able to articulate challenging positions to college managers, especially in those difficult circumstances or else their voice is not getting heard, the voice of the students. That is something unison has certainly observed in some difficult circumstances in some colleges, and that is not something that we would want to persist. I thank you, convener, to very briefly. The DIS would share the observation of unison on the dynamic of student associations and colleges. They are on the payroll, as it were, and a lot more could be done to support the excellent student representatives in the sector to be more independent, to feel more confident in their independence and to be able to challenge and contribute strategically, because the DIS is certainly experienced similar to what Lorkan's outlined there. I am aware, through discussions with the NUS, that there are a number of student associations and colleges that are facing cuts. I think that that is a concern at a time when we are talking about trying to increase student engagement strategically. Student associations should not be having their resources cut. I really do appreciate those comments there. There is one more about diversity. Across student representatives and boards and the college student associations, there are other attempts to make sure that there is balance in that. There is balance relating to how many women there are, minority ethnic groups, disabilities and so on. I go to Eve first and perhaps you can pick up if you had anything from the last point. There are several pieces of work that happen within colleges to increase the diversity of student voice. We are looking at it at the lower level levels, so we are looking at how much diversity there is there, and then looking at how diversity within those reps translates to higher level reps and how that relates to the board. There is also about who is on board, so it is who is elected into those positions and there is work to do there, but the support that the student association needs from the college to ensure that when those board members are able to work with a huge amount of evidence that is from that diverse groups of students. That links back to the things that we have been saying about. Student associations in colleges are not properly funded and they are funded at the will of the college. There is a real issue in how funding works and the support that the student association gets from the college in terms of its autonomy. An issue that has not been resolved in the 10 years of regionalisation is how student associations are funded and how they develop that capacity. Many of the staff that support students associations are college staff. When you are trying to help a student association developer an autonomous voice, a member of staff that is supporting that is often quite a junior member of college staff, but they are the ones with the ability to support and help them develop that autonomous voice. It creates very difficult situations, but we are working on the diversity of student reps. The student reps that we deal with that work on board are amazingly diverse. I deal with student reps who are doing amazing work within their colleges and they are also juggling little children. They come from HE courses but FE courses as well. There has been a big improvement in the regionalisation and the work that we have done with student associations. As we have increased the student capacity to work, there are some amazing officers out there who are very diverse. They come with lots of different student experiences that bring richness to the representation that they do. Now we will move on to questions from Michael Marra and then on from after Michael it will be Mr Bob Dorris. It has been really useful evidence so far. Obviously we are trying to understand the impact of regionalisation and that reform process that we have gone through. I think that the coverage of industrial relations is a particular issue of concern to me, but I know that colleagues have covered that already, given how regularly those issues occur. Some of the questions that I think are on structural issues are really important as well. I want to focus on outcomes for learners if that is okay. Maybe Stuart Brown commented on the issues about equity of access for the coming out of that reform process, perhaps in terms of the number of colleges that are reducing and an urban rural divide. The SFC annual report on college performance for 2021 said that there was a 61.3 per cent completion rate for students. The nearest comparable figure that I have for England from the Department for Education is 89.1 per cent. Have you had any idea of the gap in terms of completion rates for localifications and whether the structural issues that you identified might have any impact on that? That is a really concerning gap. We are talking about 20 per cent in terms of the gap between England and Scotland. I am surprised by that. I was not aware that it was that large. I had suspected that there might be a gap. There has to be a line drawn between that and the regionalisation process, some of the issues that I have outlined earlier in terms of equity of provision. There is a funding aspect to that. There are also questions to be asked around how funding that is given to the sector is used and what the priorities of the sector are in terms of delivery. I will go back to my point about competing visions amongst colleges about what they are there for. In a time when the outcomes are at 61 per cent of completion, any discussion about moving towards more tertiary education and more degree awarding powers is part of the dialogue in some parts of the sector. That is really concerning because there is going to be a significant amount of people who are already left behind and getting further left behind. That is of concern. I think that some of the governance issues—I am happy to answer further questions on my views on college governance—will definitely come into the factor of that. Finally, educators and educational professionals need to be at the heart of designing curriculums and delivering outcomes. If there is a culture in the sector where representatives of trade unions or a professional association are not engaged with effectively, they are not going to get the best outcomes. We need to break down that barrier between the unions and management. We need to get more inclusion of practitioners, more practitioner voice in the delivery of colleges and away from a shift of simply numbers, key performance indicators and all the rest. Lorcan, any comments on the same issue? I am afraid that that is a figure that I have not seen before, Michael. I do not think that I can really comment on that, especially if I would like to check in with our committee just to see who that squares with their experience at the co-office. Obviously, it has been very difficult through the pandemic years. That is not something that is unique to Scotland, but everything else that we have talked about in terms of worker and severance programmes, cuts in staff and how that is being contiguous with regionalisation and the shuffling about that. Some of those are just services within a local authority area and the effect that it may have, I suggest that none of that helps in terms of completion courses. I am afraid that I cannot give a more detailed answer. I have not seen that information before. We need to make a bit of progress here on looking at the time. My last question is about the differences between large colleges and small colleges, which I think comes to the core of what we are talking about. Those figures are unique to Scotland and are in the SFC report as well. The differences in completion rates for large colleges are 52.7 per cent to 70 per cent. I will leave it, because I cannot give the figures. It is the similar figures that we got last week. I would have liked to respond to that. To me, it is a core question about the difference between large colleges and small colleges. I did say short supplementary. I will move on now to Mr Doris, if that is okay. Okay. My substantive question is to Mr Brown. I found the submission really helpful. I was particularly interested in how colleges coped through Covid. I am not sure, but we should put our thanks and record to the amazing work that we have done in colleges. Some of that reflect in the ISF that evidence. We are saying that colleges coped incredibly well, so there must be some strength in regionalisation that enables colleges to cope well. However, of more interest to me, Mr Brown was that it was inconsistent. What is key for this committee would be how do we get that consistency across the regions and then there was a concern in relation to that not happening nationally. It is how we get that consistency across the regions and across colleges and make sure that it happens nationally. I thought that that was really interesting with the evidence. Thank you, Mr Doris. I would say that colleges succeeded because of the commitment of the people that work there. Our members, the members of the support staff unions, all the staff stood up and delivered. They were experiencing all the pressures that we were all experiencing during the early stages of the pandemic. They adapted to new ways of working almost overnight and continued to deliver for students. That is something that I need to put on the record, is how hard all college staff did what to achieve that. In the submission, I have outlined some of our concerns about inconsistency, and that is linked to the lack of national discussion that took place. You had the CRG, the Covid recovery group that was led by the Government, which was good, but it was very high level. What did not take place despite many, many requests from all the unions that are organised and recognised in the sector was sectoral level discussion. There was not really much in the way—if at all—discursion at NGNC about Covid matters. When you are talking about issues such as absence management, etc., due to Covid, that is a terms of conditions issue that should be discussed at NGNC. Health and safety matters can be contractual. That should have been discussed at NGNC. It never was, and we were met with resistance around that when we did bring it up. We have the strategic partnership forum, as I said earlier. That is a step forward, but it has come very late in the day. One of the things that we have been pushing for and we started during the darker months of the pandemic was let's have a national health and safety forum. Let's get used to employers and unions discussing sharing issues, sharing good practice to see whether we can get that consistency across the sector in approach. The employers have not taken us up on that offer. There have been many attempts throughout the pandemic to try to get more consistency through strategic level discussion at a sectoral level. However, they have fallen in deaf ears with college employers throughout the period, unfortunately. That is very disappointing. Mr Doris. Okay, thank you. I'll leave that particular one there. I can have a brief follow-up question to Mr Mullen if that's okay. Mr Mullen, you understandly spoke about what you thought were negatives within your submission. The paper that we have in front of us shows massive increases in successful learners across a variety of groups for adult returners, for disabled, for black minority ethnics, for people from deprived backgrounds, right through the regionalisation process, which is clearly the figures that are striking. I get that there are concerns for the questions that are absolutely coming to me and there are concerns in relation to defending our members' interests. However, surely you must accept that there must be a strength somewhere within regionalisation that is imperfect, as you may find it, that we have had significant progress across all the groups that we want to see succeed, and that is why FE is there, of course. Do you direct that to Mr Mullen? There definitely are some benefits to regionalisation. There are some strengths, some of the points that you've made there. Unison has no kind of argument to them, I suppose, and I said this in response to one of the earlier questions. Our experience always skews more towards the negative because that's what members call their trade union. I don't disagree with anything that Mr Doris said, but I suppose that the issues around regionalisation, the way that we are articulating, would be more to do with the problems rather than the benefits, because that's what our members bring to their reps, their reps, bring to their officials, bring to their committees, and I suppose that's our function. I suppose that the reason for asking the question to Mr Mullen is absolutely defend members' interests, but we want to be a proactive part of improving the sector, and to be proactive in improving the sector, you've got to identify the positives and work collegiately to push on those positives. Is that something that you're up for doing? Absolutely, and I think that if you spoke to some more senior representatives, one of the key reasons why they're seeking more facility time on a par with what they've given some other sectors that were in those relations for better to take the health service is, for example, that it would free them up to actually do a bit more of the forward-looking collegiate stuff, not just to fair fighting around the detrimental issues. So, when time is short, they have to focus on the most urgent press and issues, and, of course, those are where detriment falls on members, fighting back against that and trying to defend members' interests, as you said. Mr Brown does want to come in, but for the purposes of the Committee on Timing, I know that our next section is going to be quite concise, so I'm extending the question, this section, by five, ten minutes, to accommodate Mr Brown's response to this and then questions from Mr Rennie. So, over to you, Mr Brown. Thank you, convener. I'll be very, very brief. I think that I'd just like to make clear that all the unions recognised in the sector do want to work with the employers, but it may relate slightly to my answer to Mr Doris's last question. That needs to be met by our employers. I said earlier in my evidence that trade unions react. If we are continually in a cycle of confrontation, of dispute, of having to fight for pay, for having to fight for our terms of conditions, having to fight to defend national bargaining, that erodes trust, and I think a lot needs to be done to rebuild trust because I do think that there is a lot of worth to be found in collaborative work. So, it was just to put that on there, and the final point I would make is that the facility time across the sector is an issue. It is routinely a cut that is taken quite quickly by college management. If you want proper re-engagement, you need to give elected representatives, workplace representatives the proper time to engage, because if they don't have a lot of time, all they will deal with is the firefighting issues. They need to have time so that they can get involved in the wider life of the college as well. Thank you, Mr Brown. I am going to move over to questions from Mr Rennie now. It was just to say that I found the AS feel of submission constructive. I didn't find it defensive. I want to put that on the record. We should also put on the record, convener, that we don't have comparable figures in Scotland and England for 2020-21 completion rates, and that's twice a figure that we've got on the record over two weeks, which we don't know if it's remotely robust, so we should put that on the record. Mr Rennie? Thank you very much, convener. I'm surprised by the evidence today. This sector has faced 10 years' worth of cuts. There are 43,000 full-time or whole-time equivalent student places cut. We've got a £51.9 million cut this academic year coming. We've got flat cash up until 2027, but you don't seem angry. I'm really surprised why you're not angry. If I was you, I'd be spittin' mad. Why is that not the case? Stuart Brown perhaps first? Please don't confuse my politeness and deference to this committee as not having frustrations or indeed anger. Perhaps if I had been sitting in front of this committee two or three weeks ago, Mr Rennie, in the height of a dispute that was dragged out by the employers, I would be expressing my anger in more forthright terms. It is immensely frustrating trying to make progress in terms of employment relations in the sector, because it is often the case that we are met with opposition. I know that the EIS feeler, their elected representatives, want to be further involved in the strategic life of the sector, the strategic decision making of the sector, but progress is not made and the anger is real. The problem that you have now is that after seven or eight years of a cycle of disputes, trust is eroding between the unions and the employers, but trust is also eroding between our members, college staff members and their management. I have seen it on picket lines in two disputes now. I have seen it in conversations. There is an awful lot of anger in the sector from our members directed towards their management. They often do not feel valued. They often feel that they are perhaps the enemy to management at times. That anger is there, and please do not diffuse my politeness without a lack of anger there. You are a great diplomat. You have mentioned the management several times, but are not you both just victims of Government policy? I do not think that it is as simple as that. I think that the Scottish Government does have a role to play in the sector, and we have seen in past disputes the Scottish Government stepping into the sector. There have been three lessons learned exercises instigated by the Scottish Government, so attempts have been made. However, it is to follow through on those attempts that does not seem to be happening. I cannot understand from the end of the sector 18 months ago why we are on the third lessons learned exercise that is telling us pretty much the same things are the problems that the last two did. I think that there needs to be a serious look at college governance. I think that the issues of accountability between principals and their boards are something that has to be looked at at parliamentary level and by the Scottish Government. As I said earlier in my evidence, the view of the EIS, the certain principals and certain colleges have disproportionate power and influence within the sector. Until you balance out that more equitably, I think that we are always going to have those problems. Are there witnesses who would like to come in? Lorcan Scott and Arnau are in the chat bar. That is nice, convener. I thank Mr Rennie. I hope that you have noted that I have emphasised wanton in almost every answer that I have given the need for a step change in fondon for the sector. I have cited the relative fondon figures for the different stages of education within Scotland and a bit like colleges like behind all of the other elements within that step. I think that I am angry all the time, Mr Rennie, in my work. I sort of have to have a certain level of balance or else you cannot continue to operate. There is huge frustration and anger amongst our representatives within our union about that relative fondon level compared to universities. When we are talking about services, just like at a catering, for example, to be stripped out, to have colleges where people cannot get a hot meal on the campus and it is just about a machine instead, that is not the experience of most university campuses. That is not to play one sector off against the other, that is absolutely not what we want to do. We also represent thousands of members in that sector too, but the fondon desperately needs to be addressed for further education. It is something that we have been very clear on in our evidence of thinking and what we have said today. We just need to emphasise that there are still choices and responsibilities for sector leaders within the allocation that they are given and that there is a lot that needs to be improved there as well. We are just trying to balance that out in the evidence that we give. I have put an hour in the chat bar, so she can respond to Mr Rennie. I just want to make it clear that I am not here from NUS. I know that NUS would have a lot to say on the issue of funding. Certainly in the conversations that we have with students, that college funding is a long-term concern and the way it affects the structures, but also a way that it affects the experience. As I was saying at the minute, it is the part of the sector that plays such an important role in giving people life chances and changing approaches to education. We need to think about how we invest in it and how we give it the parity of esteem that it deserves. I would say that we need to speak to NUS and get input from it in terms of long-term funding and how it feels about it. Thank you very much for your answers and responses today. Thank you very much for allowing us to extend the session ever so slightly. It was very valuable and I did not want to cut things off too much. I would like to thank you for your time today. We will now move on to agenda item 2, so I will let you guys go. Thank you very much. Our next item of business is the consideration of two pieces of negative subordinate legislation, the education fees Scotland regulations 2022, which is SSI 2022-156, and the student support Scotland regulations 2022, which is SSI 2022-157. We will start with the education fees Scotland regulations 2022, SSI 2022-156. Do any members have any comments on this instrument? I have a constituency case, convener, of a Ukrainian student who is living here, and has been taken in by a family in north-east Fife, but they are studying in Ukraine. They cannot receive any universal credit support because they are classed as a student, and they cannot receive any student support because they are studying in a Ukrainian university. I am keen for us to, perhaps, on the back of this, write to the minister of the UK Government and of the Scottish Government. For them to sort this out, to make their mind up, are they people students or ordinary citizens? One way or the other, they should get some kind of support. I do not mind which, as long as it is something, because we need to provide proper hospitality for them. Thank you, Mr Rennie. Does anyone else have anything to comment on that? If we are, as a committee, agreed to take up on the action that Mr Rennie is suggesting, that we write to both Governments to try and find a solution for these people, yes? Agreed? Excellent. Thank you all over for acknowledging, and I am not hearing anything from Mr Day. I know that he is just listening in remotely. The next is the consideration of the Student Support Scotland Regulations 2022. Do members have any comments on this instrument? The committee agreed that it does not wish to make any recommendations in relation to this instrument. Thank you very much. That is super. That is the conclusion of the public part of today's meeting. We will now consider our final agenda item in private and can ask members that are attending virtually to reconvene on Microsoft Teams in a few minutes. Thank you and good morning.